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ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED BEEORJS THE 



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AT ITS 



Exhibition and Meeting at Williamsport, Lycoming County, 

SEPTEMBER, 1865, 



BY 



HOK. EDGAR (JO WAN, 

of Westmoreland Vomity, 




AND 



WILLIAM H. ALLEN, LL. D., 

Principal of the Agricultural College of Pa. 

BufGEELY k Mykkp, Printers," Harrisburg, Pa. 




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ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



iteirasglbania JiMe ^gricitltaral §$mt% 



AT ITS 



Exhibition and Meeting at Williamsport, Lycoming County, 

SEPTEMBER, 1865, 
BY 

HON. EDGAR COWAN, 

of Westmoreland Count:/, 

AND 

WILLIAM H. ALLEN, LL. D, 

Principal of the Agricultural College of Pa* 



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At a meeting of the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society, held at 
Williamsport, in September, 1865, the President announced that Senator 
Cowan had been requested to address the Society, he had consented to do 
so, was present, and would now proceed to fulfil his promise. Whereupon 
he came forward, and in presence of Governor CuaTiN, Ex-Governor Pack- 
er, Mr. Newton, Commissioner of Agriculture, Professor A llen, of the Ag- 
ricultural College of Pennsylvania, and a very large number of members of 
the Society and others, delivered the address printed herewith. 

After its conclusion, Mr. John Murdoch, Jr. ,-of Allegheny, seconded by 
Mr. George H. Btjcher, of Cumberland, moved that Mr. Cowan be request- 
ed to furnish a copy of the address for publication, and for preservation on 
the minutes of the Society. The motion was agreed to without dissent. 

On motion of Mr. Thomas P. Knox, of Montgomery, and Mr. Stephen 
F. Wilson, of Tioga, it was unanimously resolved, that the thanks of the 
Society be tendered to Mr. Cowan for the able and interesting address just 
delivered. 

The meeting then adjourned. 



At a previous meeting of the Society, Gen A. L. Russell, ©f Bedford, 
stated that he had heen deputed by the President to say, that according to 
an invitation extended by that gentleman on behalf of the Society, Principal 
Allen, of the Agricultural College, would now proceed to address its mem- 
bers, and the ladies and gentlemen present. Mr. Allen then made the ad- 
dress herewith printed. 

After he had concluded, it was moved by Gen. T. J Jordan, of Dauphin 
and Mr. John C M« rris, of Susquehanna, that a copy of the address of 
Mr. Allen be requested for publication, and that the thanks of the Society 
be tendered him for the ability and interest with which he has invested his 
subject. The motion was agreed to without dissent. 

The meeting then adjourned. 



Harrisburg, November 8, 1865. 
In pursuance of these resolves, this publication is made. 

A. BOYD HAMILTON, PresH. 
A. Brower Longaker, Sec y y. 



ADDRESS OF Mr. COWAN. 



My Friends : — In presuming to address you to day, I shall not attempt 
to instruct you in your calling — in the practical details of which you are 
much better versed than I could pretend to be. In that branch of Human 
Knowledge, it would be far more fit that I should be your pupil, than that 
I should assume to be your teacher. 

I hope, too, that I may not be thought to disparage your occupation, in 
believing that your success in it, depends much more upon your care and 
industry in applying that knowledge easily within the reach of all, than in 
having a large stock of learning, which from its very nature can only be 
acquired by a few. This is a wise dispensation of Providence, because if 
it were not possible for a man to be a good farmer, without he had first 
been taught Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, and other sciences bearing 
upon a proper cultivation of the soil, the world would be often times sadly 
in lack of bread. As a man may be a very good Christian without being a 
profound Theologian, so I suppose he may be a very good Farmer without 
being a very great Philosopher. 

On the other hand, I do not wish to be UDderstood to undervalue the 
labors of scientific men in their efforts to aid you. Yery far from it. I think 
they are of the greatest possible use to you in furnishing you results at 
which you could not arrive without them. They construct the hypothesis, 
and you verify it ; they propound the theory, and you enjoy the fruits of its 
realization, and by this division of labor between you and them, both are 
enabled the better to perform their parts. 

Change is the universal law, and although slow, there is still progress from 
a worse to a better state of things. The earth is continually improved by 
the evolution of newer and more useful forms out of. the old — since the Car- 
boniferous Era there is an entirely new Flora — the Fern being almost the 
only survivor of that age. The roses, the nightshades, the grasses and all 
the plants of most use are recent. The rose family furnishes us fruits, such 
as apples, peaches, pears, plums, cherries, blackberries, &c; the night- 
shades give us the potato, tomato, tobacco, egg-plant and red peppers ; the 
grasses feed us with wheat, rye, corn, oats, &c. ; all these are staples, and 
superior to the ancient plants by far for our purposes. The animal king- 
dom too has changed, and, instead of a population of horrid reptiles as in 
the Saurian age, the horse, the cow, the camel, the sheep, and others are 
here, crowned by the master wonder of all, Man. Surely in this change 
there has been progress and improvement, but these, too, are not stationary 
or permanent in their condition. Man himself changes ; slowly emerges 
out of his original barbarism, and in the lapse of ages becomes an entirely 
different being. 



At first a naked savage, and the most helpless of all animals, he has be- 
come the master of all by virtue of his superior reason, which enabled him 
to supplement himself in everything he wanted. Without strength, he be- 
came the strongest ; without swiftness, he became the fleetest ; and with- 
out means of attack, he became the most dangerous. He did all this by 
means of weapons or tools; he is the only animal that uses tools. He mul- 
tiplied the strength of his arm by the club, and the handle of his spear was 
longer than the horn of the buffalo. His arrow-head was sharper than the 
panther's tooth, and his bow sent it afar from his hiding place. He was 
soon a conqueror with these rude engines, and he has gone on from the first, 
slowly and surely extending his dominion. The first age of his history has 
been cailed the Stone Age, because he made his tools of stone, such as axes, 
knives, spear-heads, &c. ; and these are yet found on his ancient battle 
fields, near his quarries, and in the ruins of his encampments and villages, 
to tell us of the poverty of his condition. It is more than likely, too, that 
even thus early he domesticated certain animals, such as the horse, ass, ox and 
camel, in order to aid him in going from place to place, and carrying bur- 
dens. Perhaps, too, he found that he could grow certain plants useful to 
him, but his agriculture was of little account. 

When this country was first discovered, the North American Indians were 
living in the condition I have mentioned, so that we can have a tolerably 
clear idea of the life of our ancestors thousands of years ago, when they 
commenced their career of conquest. I have no doubt they rejoiced, as we 
now do, over their new inventions, hailing the bow and arrow as Christians 
did gunpowder, and boasting of the horse as we do of the steam engine. 
How the desert tribes exulted when they found the capac ity and endurance 
of the camel, with his extra stomach to carry water to last from station to sta- 
tion, we cannot tell ; but we can suppose they were not insensible to his value 
then, more than to-day, when the tinkling of his caravan bell is heard in all 
the fairs of the Eastern world. The reindeer of the Laplander, the dog of 
the Esquimaux, and the lama of the Peruvian, all were important to them 
in the same way, and required new tools and new contrivances — saddles 
for beasts of burden — harness and sledges for beasts of draught — so that 
life was not without work to do even in the age of stone tools and animal forces. 

Still the master races among them were not content to remain in this con- 
dition, and having discovered copper and tin, they made an alloy of these 
two metals, of which they then fabricated their weapons and tools. Bronze 
was a great improvement upon stone, for these purposes, from the ease 
with which it was cast and hammered into various shapes, and in the even- 
ness and tenacity of the edge it carried. They could now mine in the quar- 
ries, hew timber in the forests, clear wide fields and cultivate them ; they 
had Agriculture. Society was then organized into the State, which mani- 
fested itself in the building of cities, temples, roads, pyramids, palaces, &c , 
the remains of which still exist as monuments of their industry and ingenu- 
ity. This was called the Age of Bronze, and how far man could progress 
with tools of that metal, was well shown in Peru, when the Spaniards first 
discovered that country. They were struggling with the same imperfect 
tools used by the Egyptians and Assyrians, thousands of years before, and 
every thing among them seemed t j wear much the same aspect as the civil- 
ization of the East in the earlier times. It is evident they understood many 
of the modes of applying the mechanical forces, from the ponderous weights 
they were enabled to transport, and the great works they erected. Still 
their contrivances were rude, and they made up for their deficiencies by an 
enormous expenditure of labor and patience, to achieve results now ob- 
tained with very little_ trouble. It is not certain, but I think it probable 



they knew of the power of the wind to drive their boats and ships, but the 
uses of the water-fall, as a mechanical agent, was not yet discovered. 

But the next discovery, and the one which has exercised by far the most 
important influence in all departments of human life, was that of Iron ; and 
being the most abundant of all the metals, and combining all the qualities 
of strength, hardness and durability, it has superseded the bronze, and is 
everywhere used as the material par excellence for tools. 

Never, or very rarely, found in a pure state, and its ores bearing little or 
no resemblance to itself, it is difficult to conceive how it was first found out ; 
perhaps by accident, at the edge of some volcano, as glass was found where 
a fire had been built on the sand and vitrified it. It is certain that it requires 
an intense heat to extract iron from its ore ; and then afterwards, the pro- 
cesses it must undergo before it becomes available for its more refined pur- 
poses, are difficult and require great skill. A certain amount of progress in 
metallurgy was necessary before iron could be made, and the age of bronze 
served as a preparatory school for this. The savage never could have 
achieved it. 

It is wonderful to think of the uses to which this metal is put, in indus- 
trial pursuits, all over the world. There is no work of any kind done in 
which it does not take part ; the finest needle and the heaviest anchor — 
nay even the heaviest ships — are alike made of it. It is so intimately 
bound up with all the processes of life, that we can only estimate its im- 
portance by supposing ourselves deprived of it ; take it away, and the 
world would come to a dead stop ; we would be savages again, to a certain 
extent, in spite of ourselves. No wonder it has given its name to the 
present age. 

Having material for tools in perfection, and having, by means of it, made 
great strides in adapting all things to their purposes, they still sought some- 
thing more. The forces of men and animals were inadequate to the in- 
creased demand everywhere making for the products of labor. Human wants 
were still in excess of human capacity to supply them, and the idea of new 
forces began to dawn in ingenious minds. The ship is built, but it must be 
rowed from port to port ; what if the wind could be made to waft it ? Then 
the sail relieved the oar, and the oarman's bench was vacated. The women 
and the slaves ground the corn, but it was found the wind could turn the 
mill as well, and the water-fall a great deal better ; and for two thousand 
years, perhaps, these were the inanimate forces used to perform the heaviest 
kinds of drudgery. Still, the operations performed were of the simplest 
kind, such as grinding, sawing, forging, &c, and they could only be per- 
formed on the spot where the power existed ; and even then it was uncer- 
tain and irregular in its action. 

There was still more wanting ; machinery with a wider function, and a 
power to drive it certain and steady ; not confined to any locality but to 
work anywhere and everywhere, in any given amount, and unaffected by 
any conditions beyond the control of the operator. In achieving this, we 
enter upon a new Era ; the Era of Invention ; and we stand now upon its 
threshold. Much as has been done, it is hardly yet inaugurated, for we 
must remember it all lies in the last hundred years. Before that time there 
were tools, but it could hardly be said that such a thing as industrial ma- 
chinery existed 

Just two hundred years ago, in 1665, the Marquis of Worcester announced 
the discovery of " a most admirable and forcible way to draw up water 
by fire." And this was perhaps the first time that fire was distinctly 
suggested as a mechanical force. It happened luckily, too, in the begin- 
ning, that it was associated with water as the best medium through which 



8 

its force could be applied to industrial purposes. Nothing has since beeo 
found to answer the purpose so well, because, when the fire communicates 
its force to the water, expauding it into steam, this can be used the same 
as wind to drive machinery; with the additional advantage, that it can be 
deprived of its power in an instant by the ease with which it is condensed. 
Here, then, was a new slave born into the w T orld, unlimited in its capacity 
for work, perfectly manageable in the hands of a skilful master, unaffected 
by the seasons and unwearied by continuous exertion. 

This hint of Glamorgan, Marquis of Worcester, has grown to be by far 
the most important feature of modern civilization, and the man who strug- 
gled so loyally to save Charles I., the most faithless of tyrants, has inaugu- 
rated a new state of things, which is likely to be forever fatal to the divine 
right of Kings, by the impulse it has given to the common sense of mankind 
everywhere. The Watts, the Fultons, and the Stevensons, have been im- 
proving upon his hint, of doing things by fire, till there is hardly any thing 
which is not done by it If a cotton crop is to be spun and woven, a fire is 
built to do it — if a great ship is to be driven across a wide ocean or up a 
rapid river, a fire is built to do it — and if a thousand tons of merchandise 
is to be carried across a continent, a fire is built, and this fire drags it with 
a speed that is marvelous. About the same time it became evident that fire 
was the agent by which the largest part of our work was to be done : it 
was question as to fuel, because it was very clear that the forests would 
not suffice for a long time to lumish it, as well as the lumber required for 
all the uses to which that article was put. 

Here the discovery of coal came in to set at rest that question, and it was 
found the provision was ample for every contingency — indeed that all the 
forests of the earth, in remote geological ages, had been carefully pre- 
served — cut, ranked and stowed away in the most compact manner, appar- 
ently to meet it. Coal mines, when carefully examined by the best lights 
of science, showed themselves the repositories of vegetable matter, the re- 
mains of immense crops of trees aud plants — compfessed and covered up in 
the bowels of the earth, concealing them till the fullness of time. No won- 
der that men, in their sincerest moods of thankfulness, call God Providence. 

That such a commodity, so simple and easily tested, should have re- 
mained so long unknown in populous countries, as fuel, is most strange ; 
yet it is the fact that in England, two hundred years ago, when wood was 
scarce, coal was but little used ; while now, its consumption is so enormous 
as, in time, to threaten its exhaustion. So, too, in America, where there 
was once the largest forest on the globe, and wood plenty, coals are now 
everywhere used, and in a short time will supersede wood entirely. It 
exists everywhere, in almost all countries, more or less in quantity; but 
being of heavy carriage, and its transportation costly, those who have it at 
their doors must eventually' eujoy such superior advantages as to make 
competition with them very difficult, in all operations where great power 
is wanted. 

From this short retrospect of the past, it is not hard to understand the 
significance of the present ; nor, perhaps, is it difficult to foresee the proba- 
ble future, 'i he first thing apparent as the result of this long and arduous 
struggle, is that the civilized man has procured for himself the. best mate- 
rial on the globe for tools and machinery. It is not likely he will get any 
thing better than iron for these purposes ; and although he may, and doubt- 
less will, improve its quality very much, yet it will still be iron. Nor is it 
probable that he will find any cheaper or readier way to generate force to 
work them, than hj fire ; beeause heat is force, and heat is best obtained 
by combustion. Here, then, are two ultimates achieved ; and his labors 



are, to a great extent, done in that direction which will leave the whole 
force of his intellect to expend itself upon invention and contrivance. Hence- 
forth he will study the nature of the work to be done, and the opera- 
tions to be performed, in order that they may be done and performed by 
means of machinery. This he will contrive so that it will attain the end ; 
and I think I am warranted in saying, from what he has done already, that 
he will succeed. No man can doubt this, who will examine the inventions 
already made in almost every department of industry. 

Another thing has been verified ; that, is, that the progress of improve- 
ment now goes on with a pace that is continually being accelerated ; so that 
an imperfect piece of mechanism can no longer maintain its place, but must 
soon give way to another, freed from defects. As an example of this, you 
may take your own agricultural implements — say the plough. How soon 
the inventors of this age corrected the deficiencies of that one which had 
come down to them sanctified by two or three thousand years of blunders. 
Elisha was found ploughing "with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he 
with the twelfth." Was this one team, or a dozen ? And yet this plough 
of Elisha was suffered to remain in its original rude and clumsy condition, 
without much amendment, till within the last hundred years. Observe, 
too, the continued efforts to improve threshing machines, reapers, mowers, 
&c. Every man brought in contact with them seems to think that it is his 
particular duty to suggest improvements. The sewing machine is another 
instance of the rapidity with which these contrivances are brought to com- 
parative perfection. Indeed its appearance, and the suddenness with which 
it has come into general use, would almost incline one to think it was given 
in order to stifle the painful cry of pale and overtasked women, which found 
poetic embodiment in Hood's "Song of the Shirt." May not the song of 
the poet have awakened and. inspired the genius of the mechanic ? 

I have said that the introduction of industrial machinery was of recent 
date, and I mean by this, machinery which of itself performs industrial 
operations, without any other aid from human hands than that which is ne- 
cessary to bring the material to be fabricated within reach of the machine. 
The ancients do not seem to have had any notion such an achievement was 
possible ; at least it w T ould appear, from all we know of their works, that 
they did every thing by hand .Now, however, it is known that the hand 
itself can be rivalled, in flexibility of movement, by machinery ; while for 
delicate exactness of execution, the latter far exceeds it. This can be mul- 
tiplied at will to such an extent, and with such a cheapening of production, 
that in the case of many articles of necessity, they are brought all over the 
world, within reach even of the poorest people. This is a kind of progress 
that cannot be arrested, and produces a civilization unlike those of former 
ages, because it cannot be lost. 

But you ask, what has all this to do with Agriculture ? I confess the 
query is somewhat startling at first sight — still it is easily answered, by 
saying everything. The farmers own the country and are, being the great 
bulk of the population, interested in its progress more than any other class. 
You have seen that iron is the most important of all materials for indus- 
trial purposes — are not your hills and mountains filled with it ? You have 
seen that fire is the force superior to all others to make things go. Who 
then has so much coal and can make fires as cheaply as you can ? I mean 
then, not indeed that you should all turn manufacturers, but that enjoying, 
to an extraordinary extent, these two articles of prime necessity in modern 
industry, you should establish and encourage manufacturing pursuits as 
the readiest means of furnishing a market for your produce and of enrich- 
ing our country. 



10 

It must be clear that from this time forward the great desideratum will 
be machinery, and whoever has the most, the best and the cheapest ma- 
chinery will be able to do the most work and produce the most wealth. 
Now to encourage manufactures is not only to encourage the use of ma- 
chinery — but to encourage the invention and production of it — and if there 
was no other reason, the farmer ought to do this in order to procure it for 
farm purposes. He is quite as much interested as any one else, that his 
work shall be done by it — not because it saves labor, but because it multi- 
plies it infinitely and saves human toil and drudgery. He will require quite 
as many people to assist him as ever, perhaps a great many more, but each 
one will control ten, twenty or one hundred times as much power as at 
present, and thus do so much the more work and in the same degree in- 
crease production. The price or wages of labor will rise, too, because the 
value of man himself will rise, and you can better afford to pay an engineer 
to drive a machine of twenty horse power two dollars per day, than to pay 
your ploughman one dollar for driving two horses. So that you see the 
laboring man will be the gainer too — he will get better wages, and as you 
can then produce much more at less cost, he will get cheaper bread. Youhave 
perhaps $250,000,000 worth of tools and machinery in the United States 
now, and you and the laborer are both better off than you would have been 
the old way, when a few dollars stocked the farm and your sinews and 
his did the rest. 

Your horse has become far more valuable, too, because thirty years ago 
he could only drag and haul your burdens. Now, since he has learned to 
thresh, mow and reap, you prize him more highly. How curious to ob- 
serve, too, that as soon as invention set coals or fire to do the carrying and 
hauling of commerce, which the horse used to do, that moment invention 
set him at the work you used to do, and both are quite as busy as before ; 
but your work is of a nobler sort, and not so toilsome and exhaustive. All 
this, however, is but the beginning ; and if you open your eyes and under- 
stand your advantages, invention will do a great deal more for you. Your 
hills and mountains, you know, are full of coal and iron; but they are also 
full of manure. Where do the rich soils of the river bottoms come from — 
the alluvials of the Susquehanna, the Ohio, the Mississippi ? Surely from 
the highlands which they drain, and they leach them out and carry them 
down in floods to enrich the fields below. It is impossible to conceive of 
the amount of fertilizing matter carried by a great river — the Mississippi 
or the Nile, for instance. All the navies in the world, if sent to the guano 
islands, could not carry such a cargo. Some day you will be shown how 
to get these manures from the hills, just as you now get lime. Science 
will determine their qualities, and invention will dig, separate and prepare 
them ; so that you can keep your soils in a condition to render you a har- 
vest worthy of the age and its progress. 

Then again you, as farmers, are interested in this march of progress in 
another way You are the owners of the great coal fields of the country, 
and it is only by an acquaintance with the leading characteristics of the 
age and its tendencies, that you can know their value, and the best way to 
develop them. Let us look for one moment at the comparative extent of 
your fields. Let the unit be 100 square miles ; then the British islands 
will be represented by 54, and all Europe by 90. Would you be surprised 
to find that Pennsylvania alone has 126, or more than one-third more than 
all Europe ? Again, the Apalachian coal field of Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
Maryland, Ohio, &c , has nearly six times all Europe, or 555; while the 
whole United States, with all its fields, has 2,000, or more than twenty-two 
times as much as Europe. You own mines of iron equally extensive, so 



11 

that you see that in both of these leading materials you are more richly 
endowed than any other country. Why, then, should you not use them, 
and know how to use them ? 

It is evident that at some time or another, too, you must look to these 
mines, and the facilities they offer for manufacturing, in order to see if you 
cannot find there a market for your breadstuffs ; in other words, a home 
market. Where do you expect to sell the produce of the great valley of 
the Mississippi, increasing as it is so rapidly, if you do not people your 
coal and iron districts with a population of consumers ? You cannot sell 
any thing now worth mentioning to foreigners, except your cotton, which 
is just the thing you ought not to sell, seeing that of all raw materials it is 
the most important, and the one out of which the most money is now made. 
Of this wonderful product you, too, have a kind of monopoly, producing 
five millions of bales in 1860; euough to employ one half the nation in 
working it up. 

Our circumstances at this time, too, render it incumbent upon us to be up 
and doing ; as before the commencement of the war we had about twenty 
years of a run of luck, which we are not likely to enjoy again. The Ameri- 
can farmer profited by it in a remarkable degree It commenced by a fam- 
ine in many parts of Europe, owing to the failure of the potato crops, which 
then was the chief subsistence of the poor. Great Britain was awakened 
by it to a more thorough consideration of her corn laws; they were repealed, 
and her markets were opened to your bread stuffs. Having protected her 
industry by her tariffs till it was beyond competition, she now recom- 
mends free trade to her neighbors who cannot afford it. 

About this time, too, an immense net work of railroads began to be built 
every where, and a large amount of labor was withdrawn from agricultural 
pursuits to build them. The discovery of the gold of California and A ustralia 
operated in the same way, taking thousands who would otherwise have been 
your competitors, and turning them into consumers. This last event gave 
an unusual impulse to all kinds of business activity, precisely as the gold 
of Mexico and Peru moved the world two hundred years before, and stimu- 
lated the torpor of the middle ages into progress in all directions. 

The next fortunate event was the Crimean war, closing the grain ports 
of the Baltic and Black Seas, leaving Dantzic and Odessa to yield the palm 
to Chicago, which from that time began to be the greatest mart in the 
world for grains. 

Again, shortly after the treaty of Paris, another war occurred of advan- 
tage to us, because it kept one of our rivals with hands full for a time. 
This was the rebellion in India, and which at first threatened to deprive 
Great Britain of by far the richest of all her colonial possessions. It was 
hardly over when Austria, France and Italy again met in battle array in 
the Historic Square, and the great battles of Solf'erino and Magenta resulted 
in the kingdom of Italy. 

Out of all these disturbances we had profits, because nothing gives an 
enterprising and energetic people such a chance for fortune, as to find her 
neighbors exhausting their means and resources in war ; while they are free 
to follow peaceful pursuits. Our history shows this, for while other nations 
were at war, we were accumulating wealth faster than it had ever been 
known to accumulate in the world before. Take the ten years between 
1850 and 1860, and we had increased the value of our real and personal 
property from seven to sixteen thousand millions, and had put an area of 
more than three hundred and fifty miles square more under cultivation. 
We had more than doubled the cash value of our farms, and had nearly 
doubled the worth of our live stock. We raised seventy millions of bushels 



12 

of wheat, six millions rye, twenty-six millions oats and two hundred and 
thirty-eight millions of bushels more of corn than in 1850. We also 
ginned two and a half millions of bales of cotton, and grew two hundred and 
thirty millions more pounds of tobacco than we did in the latter year, and 
we raised our manufactures proper from one thousand millions in 1850, 
to one thousand nine hundred millions in 1860. Think of it. 

Up until this time we were fortunate and happy ; but suddenly the scene 
changes, and instead of peace we have tear, and the worst of wars — civil 
war. The elements of strife are unloosed, and death and destruction begin 
to hold carnival. The accumulations of years are swept away, commerce 
ruined, trade suspended, and the whole industry of the people on both sides 
is devoted to the production of the various implements of war. Guns, 
cannons, swords, powder and bullets are in demand ; they need all they 
can make, and all they can buy. Enormous quantities of all kinds of mili- 
tary and naval stores are required ; ships and forts are to be built, the 
whole, too, on a scale as extensive and magnificent as the most lavish 
outlay could command. The battle fields, too, were burdened with our 
people, wounded, maimed and dead ; cities were destroyed, public works 
dismantled, and whole districts made desolate, so that the loss was incalcu- 
lable. 

Besides all this, in the very storm and smoke of the battle a great social 
revolution is going on ; the very frame and texture of society is undergoing 
change in one-half the Union ; in almost every house, and in almost every 
family, there must be new arrangements and a new state of things. More 
thau three millions of slaves are made free ; a nation of men, women and 
children, of another and a different. race, rise suddenly up from the condition 
of property into liberty aud independence, and the duties and responsibili- 
ties of their new p jsition. 'I hey are utterly poor ; not a dollar to start 
on j and thus born in the throes of war, they must, from hence, take 
care of themselves aud make their own living. No event ever happened 
in the world operating a change of such magnitude as this, in so short a 
time and under sach adverse circumstances. The exodus of the Israelites 
from Egypt has nothing to compare with it on the score of difficulty. In 
that case the Jews were in bondage, but it was only political bondage; 
they weie slaves to Pharaoh, the King, and to him alone; they lived in 
Goshen by themselves, in a distinct, separate community ; they had houses, 
families and property; they had society, organization and leaders; and 
they had miracle after miracle to break their chains ; they had a miracle to 
destroy the host of Pharaoh which pursued them ; and they had miracles 
to feed and support them' till they reached a new country and a new home. 
The negro slaves, on the other hand, were the chattels of a people, the same 
as domestic animals, and not the mere vassals of a King, compelled to pay 
taxes by making bricks and building cities for him. They did not live in 
a community by themselves, but were part of the household of their mas- 
ters, the same as his do^s and cattle ; they had no homes but his ; they 
had no families ; they did not owu their wives and children ; they had no 
property, no society, no leaders, no organization of any kind ; they had no 
miracle to aid them, unless the unaccountable madness and folly of their 
masters, in going to war about nothing, can be set down as such ; they had 
no promised land to go to, but they had to rise from their bondage and re- 
main in the face of their masters, to try if possible to cope with them in an 
independent struggle for existence. And yet these men, in their servile 
state, constituted the industry of the Southern States; by their aid it real- 
ized its wonderful increase of wealth. Now, however, all is necessarily 
chaos and confusion ; the new order of things is not yet established, and 



13 

the immense losses sustained are not yet repaired. Let us hope they soon 
will be. 

In addition, however, to the losses suffered by the destruction of property, 
diversion of labor, ruin of commerce and diminution of trade, there yet re- 
mains another memento of it, to which I now propose to turn, your atten- 
tion, and that is the National Debt, which Mr. Stevens, in his Lancaster 
speech, thinks will amount to four thousand millions, but which I would 
fain hope will not exceed three thousand millions interest bearing debt. 

Now I shall not inquire whether this debt is a national blessing or not ; 
that depends upon the use we make of it. i think, however, it would be a 
greater blessing if we had it once paid ; and it is to this task we must now 
devote ourselves. We have shown that we can maintain the national honor 
in the field, and I trust we will show ourselves equally able to keep it un- 
sullied in the market. 

We have incurred it in maintaining the supremacy of the Constitution 
and laws ; and unless we now throw away the results, it was well expend- 
ed. They are worth more to us, by far, than all else ; and if we were to 
allow them to be violated with impunity, at the wili of revolutionists, then 
all free government is at an end, and liberty, as we understand and prize 
it, impossible. There can be no liberty when the laws are not supreme. 

After four years of struggle, waste and suffering, it is now incumbent 
upon us to see, if we can, in what way we can best relieve ourselves from 
debt and repair our losses. In doing this, it is only proper that we should 
observe the same rules that you, as individuals, would do, if in your private 
affairs you found it necessary to make a like investigation. The laws which 
govern the finances of nations are the same as those which govern in families. 

First, then, as to our resources. In 1860 the estimated value of our real 
and personal property was a little over sixteen thousand millions, six thou- 
sand millions of which belonged to the seceding States, and ten thousand 
millions to the loyal States. How much remains to as now ? I think the 
latter States have not depreciated ; they may have wasted their increase 
and incurred debt, but I think their property is worth as much as in 1860. 
The rebel States are in a different condition ; having been the theatre of 
war, they suffered much more loss in realized values than we did, and I 
suppose it is not far from wrong to say they are now worth but half as much 
as before, viz : three thousand millions, and that we both together have 
thirteen thousand millions for a new start, which is six thousand millions 
more than we had in 1850, wh^n we had only seven thousand millions. 

The next inquiry is, how much we can probably make, annually, out of 
this. Between 1850 and 1860 we increased our seven thousand millions up 
to sixteen thousand, or at the rate of nearly a thousand millions a year ; 
but I have shown you the circumstances were very favorable to us, and as 
we had little or no taxes to pay, we were enabled to add all we made to ex- 
isting capital. This we cannot do hereafter. 

Besides this, the nations who were then at war are now at peace, and 
likely to be more formidable rivals, in all the industrial arts, than before 
Still notwithstanding all these drawbacks, and looking to the general pro- 
gress everywhere making, I believe we can, if fortunate, increase the value 
of our property two thousand millions per annum, or rather that sum minus 
our taxes ; because out of our annual increase we must raise the revenues 
to carry on the government and pay the interest of our debt. 

How much revenue will be required for that purpose ? This is a question 
hard to answer at this time ; but I think, from present appearances, three 
hundred and fifty millions will suffice, viz : one hundred and eighty millions 
to pay interest, one hundred millions for ordinary expenses, and seventy 



14 

millions for extraordinary. Mr. Stevens, however, put the whole at four 
hundred and seventy millions. He may be right, but to avoid all appear- 
ance of exaggeration, I assume three hundred and fifty millions as the 
amount required. 

Now if 1 should be right, it will require a little more than one-sixth of 
our aouiial gains to meet it. If, however, Mr. Stevens is right, then it will 
take a little less than one-fourth ; or to speak more exactly, his estimate 
will take 23^ per cent, of our incomes and profits, while mine takes 171 p er 
cent. Now these are enormous taxes no doubt, and it only remains to de- 
cide, from the little experience we have had, how heavily they are likely 
to bear upon us. 

Our present internal revenue system is of course imperfect in itself, 
and still more so from the difficulty of administering it with untrained offi- 
cers, and a people entirely unaccustomed to such burdens as it imposes. 

Notwithstanding, however, its figures so far give promise that it may be 
made to yield enough to prevent us after this year from further increasing 
our debt. 

It would appear from the returns in the Revenue office, that 
the collections for the six months ending 30th June, 

1865. amounted to $94,721,483 54 

From 30th June till 20th September inst 82,318,871 00 

Estimate from 20th September till 1st January, 1866.... 68, 000,000 00 

Total for the year 1865 245,040,354 54 

If to this we add amount received from customs, say 60,000,000 00 

We will have a grand total of 305, 040, 35 4- 54 

This is perhaps as much as the most sanguine expected for this year, and 
we ought to note that some of the articles most productive, existed in such 
large quantities before the imposition of the present tax, so that as yet no 
great amounts have been realized from them. We have had also to en- 
counter fraud and smuggling to an extent which cannot exist in the future, 
when the revenue officers become more skillful in the discharge of their du- 
ties. It is also probable the opinion held in the Revenue office, by those 
having the best means of knowing, will be found correct, in which the 
amount collected for the year ending 30th June, 1866, it is thought will 
reach $300 millions. 

At any rate, I should think it would be the duty of Congress, at the next 
session, to provide for raising enough, at all hazards, to satisfy all the 
world that we are both able and willing to pay. This ability of ours, I 
think the above figures put beyond a reasonable doubt, because we have 
now felt the burden of $305 millions for 1865, and we can readily guess 
from that the weight of 350 or 400 millions in 1866. If we have paid that 
sum this year, (305 millions,) when all was in confusion and disturbance 
with the closing scenes of the war, with the disbanding of nearly a million 
of men, and with all the uncertainty incident to our situation, we certainly 
have right to expect a very large increase when peace is fully restored,. 
when the citizen soldiers get back to productive industry, and the policy of 
the nation is settled by the restoration of harmony and good will in all parts 
of the Union. If we can once raise enough to pay off the interest and cur- 
rent expenses of the year, we will be free from danger, if we do not, it is 
impossible not to fear the worst results. Our people are willing to bear as 
long as possible the heaviest burdens if they find them growing lighter, but 



15 

if on the other hand we make their condition hopeless by an increase of 
them, they may remedy themselves in a very abrupt and' compendious man- 
ner, and refuse to pay altogether. To avoid a contingency so much to be 
dreaded as this, we must struggle to achieve several things : 1. The pacifi- 
cation of the South. 2. The restoration of the public credit. 3. Retrench- 
ment of government expenses to the lowest point. 4. The discounte- 
nancing of all waste and extravagance, even in private life. 5. The es- 
tablishment of a great system of American industry, various enough in its 
character to furnish employment to all our people every where, with suffi- 
cient protection to put it out of the reach of undue foreign competition and 
combination of capitalists against it, and till it has matured itself. 

1. It must be evident to all who reflect, that we are deeply and vitally 
interested in the immediate pacification of the Southern States, and in their 
speedy return to conditions of prosperity, so that they may aid us in paying 
their share of the national taxes. How this can be done best is a most 
difficult question, and one upon which people will differ widely. The true 
rule, however, in such cases, is not only to acquiesce in, but to carry out 
oi eerfully whatever plan the properly constituted authorities may adopt to at- 
t$n the desired end. Somebody must decide in such a conflict of opinions, and 
those to whom we have confided that duty ought to hav^e eur confidence 
and support, although they may not do what we would have done had we 
been in their places. All government is based upon the agreement that 
those who are disappointed by the rejection of their plans, will submit 
themselves to that which is determined upon, and without this it could not 
exist. The very best way to do anything is seldom found or adopted ; 
but owing to the imperfection of our natures, we must always fall upon 
one not free from objections. Nevertheless even the worst of these succeed 
in the hands of wise men who make the best of them, in the help they give 
one another in carrying them out. One thing I think very certain, that 
union, harmony and the supremacy of the laws cannot be restored by con- 
tinuing the same sectional hate and animosity which so recently endangered 
them ; while it is equally certain that a return to the old national and fra- 
ternal feeling would soon unite us more strongly than before. 

'I. And second, as to the national credit, or as I might with great pro- 
priety phrase it, "your credit." This, at present, is at forty-three or forty- 
four per cent, discount; that is, it takes $1 +3 or $1 44 of your cents to 
make a dollar; and when you buy anything with your dollar, you only get 
seventy cents worth ; your dollars are only worth seventy cents each. 

Why is this ? Because people are afraid you will not redeem your dol- 
lars, and they charge you thirty cents on each of them, on account of that 
fear and the risk they run. Now if you could satisfy them their fear was 
groundless, and the risk they ran was nothing, you would bring your credit 
and your money at once to the gold standard ; you would increase the value 
of all your dollars nearly one-half; and you would keep up the supplies of 
your army and navy nearly one-half cheaper than you do now. It takes, 
too, nearly one-third more of your dollars to pay the interest on our debt 
than it would do if we kept them at par, because that must be paid in gold. 
You ask, how is this to be done ? I answer, let us show that we mean to 
pay it, by levying, annually, as much taxes as will keep it from increasing ; 
while at the same time we cutoff all expenses of the government which are 
not absolutely necessary. This will do it, and nothing else will. No kind 
of financiering, no kind of jugglery, will help us now ; we must pay, and 
to pay easy our intention to do so must be manifested continually. Noth- 
ing keeps a creditor in a better humor than to show our good inten- 
tions toward him and his claims ; and by putting your money up to par, 



16 

you will increase the national revenue nearly one-half, without raising the 
rates. 

3. Every part of the government service should be thoroughly revised, 
every abuse should be corrected, and every expenditure cut off that is not 
absolutely necessary. Abolish as many offices as can be dispensed with, 
and discharge the incumbents; because at the heels of a war such as we 
have had, there will be thousands who will the more anxiously desire to 
cling to the place, since the place itself has become a sinecure. Do away 
with all bureaucracy, and confine the government within its legitimate 
sphere, leaving to the good sense of the people to attend to their own affairs 
in their own way, as they are interested to do their own business far better 
for themselves than any officers which may be chosen to do it for them. 

4. It might be well to remember, too, while retrenchment and reform is 
going on in government affairs, that a reform is equally needed in this 
country in the mode of life too prevalent with individuals. It is a saying 
as old as history, that luxury is fatal to republics, and destructive of public 
virtue. Wherever it prevails with those rich enough to indulge it, it is 
sure to be imitated by thousands who are too poor to do so. These, then, 
become slavish and corrupt, in order to maintain themselves in extrava- 
gance. With such people there is no such fund to draw upon as the public 
money, and no place so loosely guarded as the public treasury. There 
they can plunder with impunity, because it does not require a great while 
to beget such a number of offenders that correction is impossible, and every 
new rogue who makes his appearance is hailed as an accession, and to be 
protected as one of the fraternity. 

5. As agriculture in this country is now sufficiently productive for its 
markets, I would turn your attention to the establishment and protection 
of manufactures of all kinds of which it is capable, as being, for you, the 
surest way to create a market for your products; and besides, the one 
which most certainly leads to wealth and independence. You have seen 
that you are now in a situation to enter more largely into this department 
of industry than any other nation, because you have more coal to create 
force, more iron to make machinery, than any other. Besides these, you 
have more of cotton, in fact, than you can work up ; a raw material of the 
greatest value, and one which would, in the end, contribute most materially 
to put our finances upon an easy footing, if we could manufacture it our- 
selves, instead of letting other people do it for us and take the profits. 

Great Britain is, perhaps, the richest empire in the world, and she owes 
it chiefly to her manufactures, which she carries on, by the aid of her coal 
and iron, in a manner not only worthy of all praise, but of all imitation. 
She burns, perhaps, forty millions of tons of coal annually, makes three 
millions of tons of crude iron, and worked up, in 1860, one billion two hun- 
dred million pounds of our cotton, and nearly two hundred millions of pounds 
she got from other countries. This cotton cost her about two hundred 
millions of dollars, and when manufactured, it was worth to her nearly twice 
as much, after deducting six or seven millions for drugs and dyestuffs, which 
she had imported to work into it. So that she bad about one hundred and 
ninety millions for her time, trouble and labor in the premises. Why should 
not we strive to make the same gain, in the same way ? 

I am also encouraged in the belief that we might rival her, in a very 
short time, by a consideration of what we have already done, and under 
somewhat adverse circumstances. Heretofore we have suffered from a want 
of circulating capital, and we have had to pay about twice as much for the 
use of money as they do in England. This was a serious drawback, but it 
ought not to remain in our way much longer, since the national debt, mobile 



17 

In itself, is still further mobilized in being made the basis of bank capital. 
Add to this the fact, that the present supplies of the precious metals are 
exercising a most extraordinary influence everywhere, in rendering ex- 
changes easy. There is now hardly any species of property in this country 
which cannot be solved into money, readily and at fair prices, so that there 
is no such thing as dead, inert capital, and all the business operations of 
society take place easily. 

While, too, advantages on the score of capital are being more and more 
equalized every day, in our favor, our prospects are brightening in another 
direction, that of labor, the wages of which, in European countries, has been 
so low, that it was impossible for us to compete with it, without degrading 
our own below the republican standard. Now, although our wages are not 
falling, yet I think there are evident symptoms that they are about to rise 
in other countries. How long can the capitalists of the old world continue 
to buy the labor of the poor, for that which merely suffices to keep soul and 
body together ? And how have they been able to do it heretofore ? The 
answer is obvious. The poor could not escape from the thraldom imposed 
opon them by over-population, and the ascendency which ages had conferred 
upon power and capital over them. They can escape now. The new fire 
force is annihilating space, and breaking down rapidly all the barriers 
which have so long hemmed in the laborers of populous countries. Popu- 
lations are being mobilized, too, and move upon one another, from place to 
place, far more freely than ever before, and it seems to me the day is not far 
distant when the poor man will find out the highest and best market for his 
labor, with the same shrewdness the rich merchant finds it for his goods, even 
though it be in iuc am He goes to the .. »vith 

far more ease to-day, and in less time, than he used to require in crossing the 
Atlantic. Why should he toil a doomed slave in Europe, when fortune and 
competence await him iu new homes in America, Australia, and other lands? 
Is he too poor to pay his passage, or too timid to make the venture ? Capital 
is beginning to know his worth, and is providing for his transport, and his 
protection by the way. Continents are being opened up for his reception, 
and he is no longer compelled, as in old times, to colonize himself slowly, 
away from the coast, through generations of struggle. The railway dashes 
away through the very heart of the wilderness, carrying him along where 
farms and mines are to be had, not solely as the reward of genius or money, 
but simply as the wages of a sound body, and an industrious pair of hands. 
The wages of labor, then, must soon find its level, the same as other com- 
modities, and that upwards, and not downwards, as heretofore. 

In the meantime, and before the changes I anticipate will be brought 
about, we must do the best we can ; for if we can only once get a fair start 
in manufacturing, we will bring into play a vast amount of labor, even in 
this country, which is now unproductive. We have seen that the laborer 
does not move as readily from place to place, in search of higher wages, as 
he is likely to do after a while. He manifests, in many cases, the same in- 
disposition to seek for employment at all, unless it comes to him, and is 
congenial. Idle men are not so much idle because they prefer to do noth- 
ing, as because they have not found the kind of work which suits them. 
Some are industrious in one pursuit, some in another, and all are as various 
in their preferences for a vocation, as they are in other things. 

One of the advantages of a manufacturing community is, that on account 
of the variety of the processes it requires, it is able to furnish congenial 
employment to all the members of it, so that none are idle. It is for this 
reason that the people of New England are, on the whole, more industrious 
than in other parts of the Union. She has such a variety of industry, that 
2 



18 

all her people find something they like to do. In the South, on the con- 
trary, there were more idlers than in the middle States, and the reason was, 
there was nothing doing hardly except farming and planting there ; 
and those who did not like those pursuits did nothing. Establish manu- 
factories, however, and they will be as industrious as anybody else. I 
have no doabt, either, that there is just enough of such idle people now in 
this country, who, if they had a chance, would produce as much as we 
uselessly import. I think it will be found to be a law of nations, as it is of 
families, that just in proportion as they go abroad to purchase that which 
they might produce themselves, just in tbe same proportion will a certain 
number of them remain idle in consequence. Hence it is one of the first 
and fundamental duties, both of families and nations, if they want to be in- 
dependent, never to go elsewhere to buy what they could make at home. 
Prom this any one can have an idea of the importance, to us, such a source 
of revenue would be, if we had all our idle people everywhere employed. 

Mr. Morrill, of the Cambria iron works, in a letter of his recently pub- 
lished, shows that it requires about forty days' labor to make a ton of iron, 
and that in this period of time, the internal revenue tax upon the articles 
consumed by the laborer, is $5 83, or $4-3 72 for the year. This sum the 
laborer pays, because he is at work, and can afford to consume the articles 
subject to the tax. If, however, you stop the Cambria iron works, by 
buying your iron abroad, you will throw the laborer out of employment, 
and oblige him to consume only such articles as are absolutely necessary, 
and therefore free, and he will pay nothing towards the national burdens. 
Again, however, it will be remembered that if we keep him employed, the 
product of his industry also pays a tax, which, if he were not employed, 
would not go to swell the collections in the revenue office. 

I suppose it is hardly necessary to elaborate this point. There is some- 
thing in the view I have taken of it, which every man seems to recognize 
as true, almost by instinct. 

The question ot' free trade and protection has been much mooted in this 
country heretofore. Now, however, we are likely to hear less of it, from 
the fact that no one would be willing to raise the price of a home product 
by internal taxation, and then admit the foreign product duty free. To do 
so would inevitably destroy us. This, then, settles the difficulty, because 
if the impost is laid at all on that principle, it must be adequate to put the 
home producer on an equal footing with the foreigner, or it might as well 
not be laid at all. And it is to be hoped that, hereafter, the policy of the 
government will be fixed and steady, so that men may know, when they 
embark in any business, how much they can expect in this way from it, and 
how far they can rely on it. Nothing exerts such an injurious effect upon 
the production of any country, as a constant tinkering at the laws, and es- 
pecially revenue laws No man is willing to embark his capital in a pur- 
suit, if he is afraid that Congress will either put new taxes on him, in- 
creasing the cost of his commodities, or will take them off somebody else, 
and thus lower the cost of them, ruining him, perhaps, in an hour. No 
citizen ought to be exposed to changes of this kind, because it is impossible 
to guard against their bad effects, depending, as they do, upon the caprices 
of the legislature, and the various fortune of parties. No nation ever yet 
has been able to build up a great system of industry, without steady pro- 
tection of this kind. Without this, it never could get a start in competition 
with rivals in successful operation. Constructive industry has its periods 
of childhood and infancy, when it requires the fostering care of the com- 
munity, in order to keep it on foot till it matures itself in all the arts it must 
necessarily learn. It must make its erections, it must procure engines and 



19 

machinery, must lay in stock and raw material. It must next learn the 
various processes involved, must learn the economy of managing the busi- 
ness, and finally, must be able to keep pace with the improvements daily 
making in all parts of these. So that it will be seen that it is not the work 
of a day, or a year, but indeed heretofore it has required centuries to enable 
it to command in every market. Now, however, everything perfects itself 
so rapidly, that a much shorter time will be required. 

Still, during that time it is essential that it, at least, should have the con- 
trol of its home market. This is the lowest price any community can pay 
for this species of independence, and the great advantages which ultimately 
flow from it. And this the community cannot confer, except through the 
intervention of its government. It cannot be done by the agreement or 
combination of individuals, which has been often tried, and as often failed. 

I think, then, we should extend to our industry, during this period of its 
pupilage, a steady and uniform degree of protection, sufficient, at all times, 
to secure it against the combination of all rivals, which is another and very 
formidable danger to which it is exposed, because any one can see that the 
manufacturers, rich as those of England, could well afford to stand a heavy 
tax, in order to break down such a rival as we are likely to be, if we are 
once matured. And the very fact that they may combine for this purpose, 
(and it is said have, at times, done so,) is enough to justify us in guarding 
in every way possible against them. It seems to me we can better afford 
to pay to keep them from mischief of this kind, than they can afford to pay 
for doing it. 

I am, therefore, very strongly of opinion, that hereafter there will be 
little difference of opinion in our councils as to the policy of inaugurating a 
great system of American industry, worthy of the age in which we live, 
and showing a proper appreciation of the remarkable advantages we enjoy 
for the purpose of carrying it out. 

Then, again, we shall be knit together in the bonds of true union and 
harmony. There will be no more sectional division, but all will constitute 
a whole, of which the parts will be so dependant upon one another, as to 
exclude the possibility of rupture. 

This is now within our reach, and no people ever before had an oppor- 
tunity of achieving so much, if they are wise and prudent, and none have 
ever had so much in danger from folly and dissension. Empire is offered 
to us on the one hand, if we show ourselves worthy ; anarchy and disgrace 
on the other, if we do not. Choose ye between them. 



THE ECONOMY OF INTELLIGENCE. 



AN ADDRESS BEFORE TBE PENNSYLVANIA STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
AT THE ANNUAL EXHIBITION, WILLIAMSPORT, SEPTEMBER 27, 1865, BY 
WM. H. ALLEN, PRESIDENT OF THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE OP PENN- 
SYLVANIA. 



Mr President and Gentlemen of the Society : — When valuable min- 
erals are discovered in any accessible locality, men of practical sense are quick 
to understand that the opening and working of the mines will benefit them- 
selves and the public They know that mountains of iron, and placers of gold, 
and rivers of oil can add nothing to the wealth of a country until they are 
reached, appropriated and used Therefore they subscribe liberally to 
works of internal improvement, by which the treasures which are locked up 
in mountain, rock and forest, may be set free and made available. And 
they act wisely. The increase in the value of property in Pennsylvania, 
resulting from her public improvements, would pay their cost five times 
over, and every citizen of the Commonwealth has been benefited, directly 
or indirectly, by these works. 

But Pennsylvania has other veins of latent wealth — other quarries of rich 
ore — lying waste and unopened, which are as capable of adding to her pros- 
perity as her abounding forests, her fertile valleys, and her rich deposits 
of iron, coal and oil. These are the minds of her children — minds hidden, 
inert, unproductive, and unavailable for the higher uses of God and man. 
If these were cultivated and set at work, "what an accession of prosperity, 
power and true glory would be the result ! Its effects would soon be mani- 
fested in more abundant production, in a higher civilization, in wiser laws 
better administered, and in greater security for life and property."* 

Labor and capital being mutually dependent, neither can be profitably 
employed without the other. The same is true of intelligence and industry; 
and an exposition of the relations of these deserves a larger space than has 
been given to it in the books of systematic writers on political economy. If 
educated labor can produce the value of five dollars a day, while unskilled 
labor can produce but the value of one dollar, the educated laborer, if we 
regard him merely as a wealth- producing machine, is worth to the commu- 
nity five times as much as the other. This estimate leaves out of the ac- 
count the higher and nobler uses of the man as a member of society, as a 
teacher, discoverer and inventor. We cannot count in dollars the value of 
a man who is competent to break loose from routine and find a shorter and 

^Quoted memoriter from a speech by Rufus Choate. 



21 

easier way to results ; who can devise new processes and new implements 
to execute them ; who makes two blades of grass grow where but oue grew 
before ; who reaps ten acres of wheat as a pastime, while his neighbor, with 
swollen wrist, and aching back, and much sweat of hard labor, reaps one ; 
who introduces new arts, opens new avenues to wealth, discovers a value 
in materials which ignorance had cast among rubbish ; and what is still 
better, directs uninstructed labor into more productive channels, and thus 
contributes a hundred fold to the common prosperity. The value of such 
a man cannot be estimated by numerical computation. 

We should be at a loss to assign a limit to the number of millions which 
the spinning jenny added to the wealth of Kngland, or the cotton gin to 
that of the United States. The invention of Richard Arkwright enabled 
England to spin the destinies of the world ; while that of Eli Whitney made 
it possible for our country to supply the raw material to keep the spinster at 
work The steam engine, with its manifold applications to navigation, loco- 
motion, manufactures and war. has proved that the power which moves the 
world does not reside in the lever for which Archimedes was puzzled to 
find a fulcrum, but in ratified vapor. 

• These labor-saving, wealth-producing machines were not made by labor 
alone. The printing press, the power loom, the magnetic telegraph, the 
mower and reaper, the sewing machine, aud a hundred other mechanical 
contrivances, all suggest something in their construction antecedent to 
hand-work The ship which spreads her wings to the breeze, and tends 
steadily towards her port, from whatever point the winds may blow or the 
currents run, is not an accidental aggregation of wood and iron, sails and 
cordage, As the ideal form is in the mind of the artist before it comes forth 
from marble, or stands out upon canvas, so all the achievements oi hu- 
man skill first existed in the intellect, and assumed form under the work- 
man's hand in obedience to the imperial mandate of mind, and in conformity 
with the plan which his own, or some other master head, had devised. 

A builder does not rear his structure till he has considered the form that 
will be appropriate to the intended use A book, worthy of the name, is 
not made with the manual labor of writing it out. Astronomy has not ad- 
vanced to its present state by mere star gazing, if Le Verrier had not 
determined the place of the planet Neptune by ingenious cyphering and 
more ingenh us reasoning, Galle's telescope might have swept as success- 
fully for the lost Pleiad as for it. Chemistry has not extended its researches 
to every substance in air, earth aud water, by making experiments at hap- 
hazard. Nature does not reveal her choicest secrets, except to him who 
knows how to question and cross- question her, and how to interpret her 
answers. The falling of an apple had been a common occurrence from Eve 
to ISewton, but men had been content, like our first mother, to test the flavor 
of the fruit, without caring to inquire how it came to fall It was reserved 
for Newton to propound ttiat question, aud not only to explain the fact, but 
also to connect that fact with a multitude of other facts, by a chain of uni- 
versal law. 

But with these achievements of intellect all around us, we permit nine- 
tenths of the mental capital of the country to lie dormant and unproductive 
for want of culture. If all the minds which are capable of high improve- 
ment in any community were trained for use by education and discipline, 
they would be adequate to all the demands of private enterprise, and to all 
the exigencies of the public service. As things are, the supply of educated 
labor is not equal to the demand for it. Large capacities lie buried, while 
educated mediocrity pushes its way into high places, and the public is 
worse served at greater cost. 



22 

There are some who profess a serious apprehension that these views, if 
carried out practically, would turn the heads of many useful people and 
make them worthless. I care not how far you turn their heads, so that you 
turn them in the right direction, that is, upward This objection is made 
by the hard school of economists, who estimate the value of a man as that 
of a horse in a mill, by the number of times he can turn the sweep before 
he wants provender, and by his perfect indifference as to how, what, or why 
he is grinding. They believe that one man is born with a saddle on his back 
and a bit in his mouth, while another comes into the world ready booted 
and spurred for a ride. It is preposterous that any one living in the light 
of the present age, under a government of equal rights and equal men, 
should object to that culture which elevates the common mind and raises 
society to a higher level. Will the workman perform his task less cheer- 
fully, or less skillfully, because he knows that he is somewhat more .and 
better than an appendage of plow, loom or anvil ? Will the engineer run 
his locomotive with less care and caution, because he happens to compre- 
hend the principles of its mechanism, and is conscious that he is something 
more than part and parcel of the machine ? Will the seaman hold the ship's 
helm with a less steady eye and sturdy arm, because he can converse with 
the winds, and read the language of the stars ? I hold that the humblest 
fisherman would decoy his finny prey more adroitly, if mind-culture should 
make him something more than a simpleton at one end of a line trying to 
inveigle another simpleton at the other end. 

Let us next observe that this waste of mind through want of practical 
culture, is accompanied by a corresponding waste of labor through misdi- 
rected effort. 

Without denying man's adaptability to the circumstances in which he may 
be placed, it will be conceded that almost every one has more natural aptitude 
for one occupation than for another, and that he will be more useful and 
happy in one line of duty or business than in another. In this, as in all 
other arrangements of the Divine economy, we perceive proofs of beneficent 
wisdom, for care has been taken that all the wants of civilization shall be 
supplied ; and to compass this end, the inclinations, tastes and capacities 
of different individuals have been made to vary in such a manner as to min- 
ister to the well-being of all. Universal geniuses are rare. The swan, so 
graceful in the water, is a clumsy runner ; and the eagle, so majestic as 
monarch of the clouds, swims very awkwardly ; and when a man turns up 
who has a knack at doing everything, he will usually be found on trial to 
do nothing well. 

But through preconceived notions of respectability, men waste their labor 
in attempts to do what neither nature nor education has fitted them for. 
Dread of losing caste has made many a briefless lawyer, and spoiled many 
a good farmer and mechanic. It is a mistake to predicate of the occupation 
that respectability which belongs only to the man. But many, instead of 
forming a character that shall reflect dignity on their calling, rely on their 
calling for their character ; and having placed themselves in this false po- 
sition, they waste one half of their lives in learning that they have not the 
wit to make a living, and then waste the other half in scheming to "live by 
their wits " 

We honor labor, not because it is labor, but because it is useful and pro- 
ductive. There is not a dollar of property which its strong, hard hand, 
assisted by the elements and forces of nature, has not created. But how ? 
Not alone by the wear and tear of living sinews. The man who should 
manufacture pins with file and hammer, however diligently he might work, 
would as certainly starve, as he who should undertake to convey passengers 



23 

on a hand cart along the line of a railway. Labor, unless intelligence di- 
rect it, has neither honor nor reward. As we honor useful labor because 
we see and comprehend its products, so and for a similar reason, we honor 
useful thought. But both prosper by reciprocal aid. Labor without thought 
is unproductive ; and thought without labor only consumes. 

Some do nothing but think. They will not stoop from their abstractions 
to say, write, or do any one practical thing for their fellow-men. We do 
not honor these intellectual dreamers, for we see no fruit of their mental 
incubations. They may have much learning, but all you can get out of 
them is worth about as much as Dominie Sampson's ii pro-di-gi-ous.'" They 
may have ideas as huge as those of Irving's Wouter Van Twiller ; ideas 
so big that they can examine only one side of them at a time ; but when 
they come around to a new side, the distance is so great that they have 
forgotten how the first side looked. They doubtless move in deep water, 
for they never touch bottom, and never come ashore. While they speculate 
profoundly on the state of society in the moon, they forget that living men 
are much more interested with speculations in real estate on the earth. 
They have counted the trees of pine- capped Ida, and the golden sands of 
Pactolus, but talk to them of the lumber of the West Branch of the Sus- 
quehanna, and the black diamonds of the Wyoming valley, and they will 
tell you that they have not studied modern Greek. They have measured 
the height of the Acropolis, and all the dimensions of the Parthenon, but 
ask them the latitude of the Great Salt Lake, and you will find that their 
knowledge has gone up Salt river. They have heard that the owl was 
taken by the ancients as an emblem of wisdom, and by imitating his solemnity 
of face they expect to be deemed as wise as their nocturnal prototype. 

Others do nothing but keep busy. They work much and do little, be- 
cause they either work without any plan or purpose, or with a plan and 
purpose that lead to no useful end. A man may walk a thousand miles in 
as many successive hours, or wheel a barrel of apples from ^ewburyport 
to Boston, or perspire over any other muscular absurdity ; but what good 
comes of it ? Who is fed, clothed, sheltered, educated, or made better ? 
It is said that an Athenian boasted to a Spartan that he could stand on one 
leg longer than any man in Sparta. The Spartan replied, "but a goose 
longer than you. " He who devotes years to the construction of microscopic 
mechanism, until he puts nil the machinery of a watch into the size of a gold 
dollar, may make a toy which will amuse children both large and small; 
but when he has finished it, he will not have contributed to the welfare of 
society the value of the coin which measures the magnitude, or rather the 
minitude, of his work. The old poets imagined that one of the punishments 
of the wicked in the other world was to draw water in a seive ; but all the 
water escaped before the seive came up. Another was sentenced to roll. a 
great stone up a hill ; but just as the stone reached the summit, down it 
would tumble again. It would be better for the stupid, blundering worker 
of this world to draw water in a seive, or roll the stone of Sisyphus, than 
to toil with might and main to do every thing wrong ; for then he would 
only lose his labor without mischief to others. A late medical lecturer 
used to say to his classes that by a certain mode of treatment which pre- 
vailed at that time in the Southern States, an enterprising physician could 
ruin constitutions enough in two or three years, to insure himself full prac- 
tice through the remainder of his life in trying to patch them up again. So 
the man who works at any craft whatever, without the guidance of a modi- 
cum of brain, is always sure of having something to do ; but like a verdant 
domestic, he kindles the fire on the stove, instead of in it, and smokes his 
eyes out instead of cooking the breakfast. 



24 

There are several institutions of learning in Pennsylvania, which were 
founded and organized with a direct aim to diminish, by a more practical 
union of head-work with hand-work, the waste of mind and labor to whieh 
I have invited your attention. Two of these, with unlike organization and 
methods, are similar in principle and aim. Both are designed to elevate la- 
bor. The oldest of these was planned and endowed by a successful mer- 
chant, who furnished in his own person a rare example of that economy of 
mental force by which a man may extend his enterprises over the whole 
world, and by operating through the heads and hands of subordinate agents, 
may become in a manner ubiquitous. 

Stephen Girard was a worker ; a diligent, provident, intelligent worker 
in wood and stone, in bricks and mortar, in ships and merchandise, in lands 
and cattle, in stores aud wharves, in gold and silver, in bank notes and bills 
of exchange, and he knew the qualities, values and powers of them all. But 
chiefly he used men as instruments to execute his work, and the insight to 
select these implied rare discrimination, while the ability to direct them re- 
quired the exercise of sound judgment and extensive knowiedge. He mea- 
sured the value of men by their intelligence, their honesty, their industry, 
their fidelity to his interests, their obedience to his instructions, and by 
their skill as carpenters, masons, ship-builders, seamen, farmers, bankers, 
clerks, supercargoes and masters of vessels. He also knew how to test 
their honesty and capability, and seldom made a mistake in either. To be 
foreman in a manufacturing establishment, or to cultivate and garner the 
harvest of a farm,, does not require more than ordinary reach of thought; 
but the civilized world was his workshop, and the surface of the terraqueous 
globe''- harvest field ! s extended over years of time, and 

over seas, islands and continents, from the equator to the polar circles; but 
he had them all spread out like a map before his mental vision, and he so 
combined his operations that the supply was sure to arrive at the place of 
demand in the requisite quantity aud at the right time. To accomplish 
this, what sources of intelligence he must have had access to and used ! 
What knowledge of the productions, tastes and wants of the people of dif- 
ferent countries ! What skill in the use of credit without abusing- it ! What 
sagacity in forming his plans ! Wh.it energy, secresy and boldness in exe- 
cuting them ! 

And for what was this vast expenditure of thought and labor? When 
we contemplate this architect of a lortune toiling early and late, without 
, repose or relaxation, to extreme age, with little sympathy from his fellow 
men, working fur an object which had been the cheri-hed purpose of his 
life — the endowment of an institution in which the unfortunate and desti- 
tute might be trained and prepared for the intelligent use of their minds and 
bodies — he rises on our view to a higher level than that on which the slave 
of avarice stands, and takes rank with those benefactors of mankind who 
have lived a self-sacrificing, heroic life. 

The design of the college which bears and perpetuates his name, was not 
so much to maintain in comfort a certain number of orphans, not so much 
to provide a school for their instruction, as to attain an object above and 
beyond these, to which these were preliminary and preparatory, that is, 
to elevate and enoble labor by the diffusion of intelligence among a class of 
youth, whose success in life must be won, if won at all, by their own in- 
dustry. A beneficent scheme, worthy of the man and of his splendid for- 
tune ! 

The Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, the second in the order of time 
of the institutions above alluded to, was established to give instruction, at 
moderate cost, to the sons of that great industrial class which is composed 



25 

of farmers, manufacturers and mechanics — a class which comprises a large 
majority of the people of the Commonwealth, and whose industry is the ba- 
sis of its wealth and prosperity. 

This institution was founded by enlightened and public spirited citizens, 
under the auspices of the State and County Agricultural Societies, aided by 
liberal donations from the Commonwealth and from individuals. Its object 
is to elevate labor, by disseminating among the industrial classes a knowledge 
of the Arts and Sciences by which labor is made productive, together with 
such moral and social instruction as will prepare young men to discbarge 
with credit the duties of good citizens of a free, self-governing Republic. 
It aims to develop and discipline the physical, intellectual and moral pow- 
ers of its students in harmonious proportion. 

At this college it is honorable to work, and the sons of the rich labor 
equally with those of moderate means. Every student, by giving six hours 
in twenty- four to study, three to recitations and lectures, three to work, four 
to meals and recreation, and eight to repose, will develop mind, muscle and 
manhood, and at the end of his course will be prepared to gain an honest 
and honorable livelihood, and to assume the responsibilities which society 
will impose. He will leave the college with the most valuable of acqui- 
sitions — a sound mind in a .sound body; and if any of our friends here 
present will visit the college, and examine its human product, they will not 
fail to notice the full round limbs, the ruddy complexions, kindly digestion, 
and elastic step of the students, and to contrast these with the flabby mus- 
cles, pale faces, dyspeptic stomachs, and languid gate of many young men 
who have tasked their minds at the expense of their bodies. 

I regret that we cannot yet exhibit similar qualities in the best breeds of 
horses and cattle ; but our first care has been to grow a harvest of Men. 
Fine animals and great crops will come in their turn. 

Our course of study includes the arts and sciences which are pursued in 
tbe best American colleges, except the aucient languages. The omission 
of the classical course enables our students to devote more time to chemistry, 
botany, mineralogy, mathematics, mechanics, and other sciences of practical 
utility to the industrial classes. But while Greek and Latin do not form a 
part of the regular course of study, instruction is given in those languages 
to students who have time and inclination to pursue them. 

It has been the aim of the trustees and faculty to discard a rigid and in- 
variable routine of study, for that, like the fabled bed of Procrustes, would 
require the f-tretching of some minds beyond the endurance of nature, and 
the curtailment of the fair proportions of others. They have preferred an 
ic and flexible course, which may be expanded or contracted to suit 
the varying capabilities and aptitudes of the students. 

Our experience has demonstrated that students who work three hours a 
day, will make as much progress in study, in the long run, as those who 
do not work at all. While, therefore, their labor causes them no mental 
loss, it is productive of the physical gain of better health and more robust 
constitutions. At the same time they are acquiring a practical knowledge 
<>f the rearing and feeding of stock, the use of agricultural machines and 
implements, the preparation and application of composts and other fertil- 
izers, the planting, budding, grafting and trimming of fruit trees, the culture 
of table vegetables and small fruits, the construction of fences, the planting 
aud trimming of hedges, the culture of shrubbery and flowers, in connection 
with the scientific and economical principles which are applicable to these 
varieties of work and production. 

It is not to be expected that the labor of the students will be a source of 
revenue to the college. They work for instruction, for health, and when 



26 

they feel an interest in the results of their labor, for recreation. They work 
for a practical application, in the field, of those principles of science which 
they are taught in the class rooms ; and as they are all learners, their work 
will hardly be performed with the celerity, skill and finish of adepts. An 
experienced ploughman would detect many imperfections in the furrows they 
turn ; and when they cultivate the corn, they sometimes tear up more than 
the weeds. They are beginners, and like all such, they give the supervisors 
of their work large scope for the exercise of patience. Yet they succeed 
in making very fair crops, and we hope in time to have something worth ex- 
hibiting to your society. 

Our number of students this year has been one hundred and thirty-two, 
one-fourth of whom are from other States. We have representatives from 
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, In- 
diana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Louisiana, District of Columbia, and 
the Island of Cuba. We desire more representative from Pennsylvania. 
We have ample accommodations for three times our present number. 
The industrial classes, for whose benefit the college has been founded, 
and who govern and direct its operations, through the agency of the State 
and County Agricultural Societies, number more than two millions of the 
inhabitants of the State ; and yet the number of Pennsylvania students 
is less than one to twenty thousand of its people. Send us, next year, 
one for every ten thousand people, and the capital which has been invested 
in roof and rooms for their shelter and comfort, will lie idle no longer. 
Enable us to send forth a hundred educated, industrious young men every 
year, and the benefits of the college will soon be diffused through every 
county of the State ; a. new impulse will be given to agriculture ; brains 
and sinews will unite their forces to augment the productions of our fields ; 
and the applications of science to industry will succeed to a blind and 
profitless empiricism, as well as to a stubborn hereditary routine. The 
economy of intelligence, through the agency of thoughtful and practical 
men, will prevent the waste of material which is the natural result of mind- 
waste, and by the saving of fertilizers, labor, food, and all forms of capital, 
will add millions every year to the pockets of the farmers and the wealth of 
the State. 



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